(718) 260–2500 Brooklyn Paper’s essential guide to the Borough of Kings March 15–21, 2019
COMEDY
Cycle of life
Laughter is the best medical billing system!
A Bushwick comic and bike messenger is
gearing up to host a comedy show in a bicycle
shop, in order to raise money for medical debt
relief. The comedian behind
“Stand Up! at Haven
Cycles,” in Bushwick
on March 20, said
he was inspired to fixie
the system by a recent
accident that left him in
the hospital.
“There was some
pretty intensive stitching,”
said Danny Felts
(pictured), the show’s
host and spokes-man.
“Fortunately I was on
Medicaid at the time, but … it reminded me
that for some people, giant medical debt can
completely obliterate their well-being.”
The night will feature four other comedians
who are also avid cyclists — Mary Cella, Jess
Reed, Anders Lee, and Max Ogle — and will
raise cash for the do-good group Rest In Peace
Medical Debt, which buys and forgives medical
debt from creditors, usually for pennies on
the dollar.
Brooklyn cyclists are acutely aware of the
dangers of medical expenses, since they share
the streets with multi-ton vehicles that could
easily squash them, said Felts.
“I can’t explain the number of times I’ve almost
been caused bodily harm by cabs, Ubers,
people texting, etc.” he said.
The comedian moved to Brooklyn from Portland,
Oregon two years ago, and said that the
car culture of his new home is terrifying.
“The people driving here are actually insane,”
he said. “It’s just absolute anarchy. I
thought a ‘New York stop’ was gliding through
a stop sign, but it’s just blowing through a full
red light!”
Haven Cycles, where the show will take
place, is also Felts’s regular spot for bicycle
repairs. Performing inside the shop will have
some challenges, he said, but he thinks they
will be able to pack in some fans.
“Honestly, the total occupancy is not a ton
of people,” he said. “But we have chairs and
stuff like that. Some people might have to stand
against the bikes.”
The comedian’s work as a bike messenger
has worked its way into his act, he said, including
a bit about the worst food item to deliver by
two-wheeler: Chicago deep-dish pizza.
“That is just a terrible food to deliver,” he
said. “It’s just a bowl of bread and cheese that
you’re trying to keep from spilling.”
Stand Up! at Haven Cycles 1546 Dekalb Ave.
at Irving Avenue in Bushwick, (347) 529–4621,
www.havencyclesnyc.com. March 20 at 8 pm.
$5 suggested donation. — Bill Roundy
Wonderville Eat prey, love
Gone to the dogs: The world is a dystopia filled with cannibals in the abstract play “The Dog, The Night, and The Knife,” opening at Irondale in Fort Greene on March 15.
Dystopian play shows the gory extremes of a very bad romance
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
It’s a dog-eat-dog world.
A bizarre new play will use a terrifying
landscape of cannibals and flesheating
canines to examine the selfishness
of human relationships. “The Dog, The
Night, and The Knife,” written by the German
playwright Marius van Mayenburg,
and translated into English by Maja Zade,
will have its United States premiere at Irondale
in Fort Greene on March 15. It tells the
story of “M,” a woman who finds herself
pursued through a brutal dystopia where
time is stuck in the middle of the night,
according to its director.
“The play is her journey through the night
where she’s being hunted and chased by
blood-thirsty creatures and trying to survive
and trying not to become one of them,”
said Yuri Kordonsky, who also teaches directing
THEATER
at Yale.
The main character must fight her way
through a world of people infected by what
the playwright calls “the hunger,” who are
driving to hunt and consume their loved
ones, reflecting the selfish nature of real-life
human relationships, said Kordonsky.
“The inhabitants of the world are hungry,
which manifests in the desire to eat the person
you love. It’s about relationships and how
selfish and possessive and consuming they
might be,” he said. “Almost everything we
can love has an element of possession and
consuming, and the pure act of generous love
is an extremely rare thing in this world.”
M’s journey seems hopeless until she
meets the character “Younger Sister,” and
the two break the rules of the play’s bleak
universe by falling in love in a selfless way,
the director said.
“They discover that relationships can
be something else, giving rather than taking,”
he said.
The play’s nightmarish landscape is also
occupied by ravenous stray dogs, played by
human actors. Rather than make the thespians
crawl on all fours and bark, Kordonsky
and his team bridged the gap between man
and beast more subtly.
“We work on movements that might be
reminiscent of dogs in their movement,
some vocal techniques the actors use that
remind you of howling and barking,” Kordonsky
said.
The play is violent, but the director said
his rendition will not be gory. Instead, the
violence is portrayed in a more abstract way,
which could be even more unsettling to the
audience.
“There’s knives and multiple stabbings going
on, bleeding wounds, we take this rather
metaphorically, nothing that we put on stage
is graphic or gory,” he said. “It’s a story that
unsettles you and should disturb.”
Kordonsky and his partners from the
production company Just Toys were captured
by the play’s visceral power, he said,
even though it was difficult to decipher. The
piece’s abstract nature became an appealing
challenge to the team, he added.
“There was a combination of a sense of
very strong and attractive mystery, the gut
visceral feeling that it’s good, and the challenge
to understand it on an intellectual level,”
he said. “But this is exactly when you know
that you have to do a play. When you know
exactly from the beginning how to do a play,
there’s no point in doing it.”
OPERA
Opera buffoons
Call it a meta-soprano!
An offbeat and often risque operetta will belt
out its satiric tunes at Fort Greene’s Brooklyn
Playhouse on March 15 and 16. Audiences at
“La Farranucci,” will discover a saucy show
that mocks the stodgy world of divas and double
arias, according to its director.
“It’s as if Mel Brooks wrote an opera in the
’70s,” said Shelly Watson. “There’s a lot of touchy
subjects and definitely a lot of things that people
would call un-PC.”
The musical comedy, written by composer
David Chesky, is an opera about an opera, and
it turns a satirical eye on the practical concerns
that underpin — and often undermine — the artistic
endeavors of the medium’s cash-strapped
creators.
Chesky’s “La Farranucci” opens on a troubled
production of a fictional opera with the same
name, as members of a Texan theater company
struggle to meet the demands of their new producer,
a former stripper who married into wealth,
and is now afflicting her high-brow beneficiaries
with her low-brow sensibilities.
“There’s a reason they’re called the nouveau
riche,” said Watson. “Money can’t buy taste.”
Soon, the opera has been renamed “Hickery
Dickery C---,” and its hippie composer,
Chuck, has been locked away for violating the
Lone Star State’s stiff indecency laws, following
an ill-fated effort to fund his creative endeavors
through the liberating art of pornography.
Chuck’s road to redemption leads to the
production really going off the rails, and — between
starting a successful gun business and
founding a new religion — the starry-eyed composer
begins to transform into the very thing
he sought to escape.
“Slowly, throughout the opera, his ethics go
to the wayside and he starts to get a taste for
what money is like,” Watson said.
The fat lady may strike a sobering note at
the end of “La Farranucci,” but Watson makes
no excuses for the state of contemporary opera.
She has seen enough productions draw the
final curtain to see that money can often override
artistic integrity.
“Is it tragic, or is it truthful?” the director
asked. “It’s sad that all these opera houses are
closing, but the most important thing is to understand
why they’re closing.”
“La Farranucci” at Brooklyn Playhouse (126 St.
Felix St. between Lafayette Avenue and Hanson
Place in Fort Greene, lafarranucci.brownpapertickets.
com). March 15–16 at 8 pm. $40.
— Colin Mixson
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
Brother, can you spare a quarter?
A pair of local video-game fanatics
plan to purchase artsy Bushwick
watering hole Secret Project Robot, and
are soliciting donations for their bid to
retrofit the space into a beer-slinging
arcade showcasing the borough’s underground
video-game scene.
“The indie-music scene has all these
bands who are making their own way,
doing their own thing, and it’s very similar
to the indie-gaming scene,” said
would-be bar owner Mark Kleback.
“It’s these kids making weird video
games, who aren’t getting paid a lot,
who are doing it because they’re passionate
about it.”
Kleback is a commercial artist who
spends his spare time crafting custom
arcade cabinets for indie games often
developed in and around Kings County,
including physics-based space brawler
Particle Mace, multi-player battle arena
Crystal Brawl, and Slam City Oracles, a
game about slamming into stuff, which
he showcases at artsy pop-up events
across the city.
But the costly logistical challenge of
transporting his nearly two dozen fullsize
arcade machines across the city
led the cabinet maker and his fiance
Stephanie Gross to seek a permanent
home for the gaming collection. The
owners of Secret Project Robot, who
also operate nearby saloon Flowers for
All Occasions, came to the couple earlier
this year with an offer to sell the
business, including all its booze, mugs,
appliances, and liquor licenses.
In response, the gamers turned to
Kickstarter to request $70,000 for their
new business, which they plan to dub
Wonderville. In just over a week, fans
have pledged a whopping $42,074,
which includes a $10,000 cash infusion
from a West Coast arcade collector,
who will receive a custom cabinet
from Kleback if the fund-raising campaign
proves successful.
With 21 days to go in the digital
money drive, the couple feels good, according
to Gross, who anticipates opening
as early as May, if all goes well.
“We’re really, really so appreciative
to everyone that’s been donating and
spreading the word,” said Gross. “It’s
been a lot of positivity.”
The couple have not settled on exactly
how they will fund the business
— the machines are not coin operated
— but there is a good chance the gaming
portion of the venue will require a
modest cover, and will feature enough
live events, including musical acts, to
justify the charge, said Gross.
“We want to keep it affordable for
sure,” she said.
Arcade
quest
Raising cash for
video game spot
Photo by Stefano Giovannini
Space invaders: Stephanie Gross, left, and Mark Kleback are taking over the Secret Project Robot gallery to install an arcade bar dedicated
to Brooklyn’s underground gaming scene.
Wonderville
Photo by Caroline Ourso
“The Dog, The Night, and The Knife,”
at Irondale 85 S. Oxford St. at Lafayette
Avenue in Fort Greene, www.irondale.
org, (718) 488–9233. March 15–April 6;
Mon, Wed–Sat at 7:30 pm. $30.
/www.havencyclesnyc.com
/www.irondale
/www.havencyclesnyc.com
/www.irondale